


Circles

by hyperions eyes (achievingelysium)



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Character Study, my final resting place, the old wedding dress (TM), this is like 500 words of 'hey look at this wedding dress', why we cant have nice things: juno wont let himself be happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 23:02:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12178203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achievingelysium/pseuds/hyperions%20eyes
Summary: Here’s the thing about locking things up: they always find a way out.Or—Juno finds his old wedding dress.





	Circles

**Author's Note:**

> so im like almost done listening to the juniverse before i'm caught up but i've been dying to write some good old fashioned angst

It happens like this.

Juno and Mick are in a fucked-up prison cell, their ballad in its final verse, and the way the light is painted across the drifting dust catches in his brain. The thick, musty smell; the pale, creamy sunlight; the way his mouth tastes, bitter and disappointed.

He bricks up the thought, shoving it aside because there’s other things to worry about—like their possible deaths and whether he feels like today is a good day for that or not.

Here’s the thing about locking things up: they always find a way out.

Juno and Mick make it out of the Fortezza.

The thought makes it out of the box he shut it away in.

His dress… well, his dress makes it out of the corner of his closet, folded up and shoved behind a pair of shoes and a board so no one who goes poking around will find it right away.

“Fuck,” Juno mutters. His fingers drift over lace and beads, and suddenly he feels like he’s twenty-three again. “I’m too sober for this.”

There’s a bottle of wine in the cupboard—Rita’s, of course, a brand he’s never heard of—and he makes a mental note to replace the bottle since he thinks he’ll be done with this one by the end of the day.

It’s sweet, a bit delicate on the tongue, and good enough to keep drinking.

Juno Steel has never claimed to be the smartest lady this side of the galaxy, and it’s good he hasn’t, because this has got to be one of the dumbest things he’s ever done.

He can hear Rita asking him why he’s kept it _all these years, Mistah Steel, if it only hurts you more, and obviously it didn’t end that well, like d’you remember that one movie with oh, what’s his face, and they’re gettin’ married_ —

Married.

He stops in front of the mirror attached to his closet door and lets the dress unfurl, fabric falling to the floor. A-line dress, off-the-shoulder sleeves. Beaded lace over synthetic silk—never able to afford the real thing, anyway—and a train ready for a wreck. There’s a dark stain under the keyhole in the back, and a shiver crawls up his spine when he remembers what it is.

Juno holds the dress up, pressing it to his chest.

“Here comes the bride,” he says, picturing himself in a different room, looking into a different mirror with a different self. Young and bright, a ring on his finger and wedding bells chiming in his mind.

He can’t help it. He laughs.

It’s all about leaving these days. Running and catching up to the past. Leaving broken bodies and old towns and Old Town. And altars, and solved cases, and footprints, and little bits and pieces of his heart, and—

Juno can still smell his cologne. Can still taste his lips, see the glint of his smile in the dark. _Juno_ ’s the ghost, but Nureyev’s the one haunting him.

It happens like this.

Juno folds the dress up and tucks it away next to a future he can never have, and then he leaves that behind, too.

**Author's Note:**

> yo find me on tumblr @dinokeiths. also. working on a penumbra sideblog lol


End file.
